What Was the Legend of the Mobtrocity

When the duo walked into Millstown, they saw three different characteristics of the village.

The first was the buildings. Most of them were made out of a blend of wooden planks, logs, and cobblestone. However, the small castle, church and walls of the town were completely made out of cobblestone. The buildings had wooden doors, pane windows, and torches that lit up the buildings and front door. Twilight, being a little observant of these houses, now wondered how the torches were not burning the entire place to the ground.

The second was the first set of townspeople. They were mostly odd human creatures with tall, bald heads and quite large noses. They wore robes of a few colors usually being white, brown, or purple. They also sometimes had aprons that were either black or white if they were not wearing a big robe. Some of them stood outside and stared at things like houses, roaming chickens, and the ground, some sprinted as fast as they could to a door—slamming themselves into it and eventually opening it after ten seconds—and some crowded up at some doors and repeatedly opened and closed the doors, blocking themselves or anything else from entering or exiting those buildings. Twilight also noticed that the children that were running around were also bald and almost identical to the adults. She had a hard time figuring out if they were all men or just alien enough to be unidentifiable.

The third was right in front of them. They were smaller people that stood at one and a half blocks tall, about Twilight’s height. To her, they looked like shorter variants of Gingerbread. To Gingerbread, they looked like Steve heads with cyan wool block bodies. They spoke to each other and calmly walked around the town, going through life like always despite the purple pony next to them.

One of the bald townspeople, preferably called villagers, walked up to Twilight. It was a child that looked up at her with admiration.

“Herr,” it said nasally with a high pitch.

Twilight leaned her head down to hear the baby villager better. “What?”

“Herr.”

“I don’t know what it’s saying. Sounds like gibberish to me.”

Gingerbread walked up to the villager and passed Twilight. “Don’t worry, I speak Nasallese.”

“Herr,” it said again with its nose.

“Herr,” Gingerbread imitated with an obviously not nasally sound.

“Herr.”

Gingerbread turned to Twilight. “It wanted to know why your hair makes you look like an emo.”

Twilight turned to the child with slight irritation. “Now that’s just rude! I am obviously not emo, I am a pony from Equestri-ahh!”

The child suddenly sprouted to an adult in milliseconds, startling and staggering Twilight from the sudden change. She looked up at the villager with small pupils and shock on her face. Ty started laughing hysterically at this nonsense.

Oh my gosh, that was amazing! Such perfect timing too! You really need to see the look on your face!

“Herr,” the villager said again with a lower pitch this time.

“I can’t believe you believed me,” Gingerbread stated with small chuckles in his words. “I don’t even speak that because it’s not a thing.”

Twilight glared at Gingerbread with narrowed eyes. “No need to insult my hair like that.”

“Hey, that’s what you get when you’re stuck with me.”

“Let’s just go to the king already.”

Twilight and Gingerbread continued walking until they reached a well made out of bricks. Twilight kept her head down and folded her ears to shut out the constant herring from the villagers. It was driving her crazy that they were all saying something that she couldn’t understand, and they were also getting annoying, too.

Herr.

Herr.

Herr.

Was that all that they could say?

The duo turned right to a small gathering of wheat farms. “Hey, you,” started the deep voice of a middle-aged man.

Twilight pricked her ears up and turned to the man in a cyan shirt, sighing in relief that she could understand them. She tried her best to be polite through the villagers’ commotion. “Yes, what do you need?”

“Can you scratch my back? If you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours for ya.”

Twilight politely declined the offer. “Uhh, no thanks, sir. I need to get going.”

She picked up her walking speed as the guy hollered at her. “Hey, where’re ya going? I need a back scratched for me!”

The duo avoided that guy and took two more rights. They eventually reached a door with a sign above it that said ‘King Appleton’. Two men in black apparel stood next to the door. To Twilight, they reminded her of the royal guards back home. They were filled with no emotion, constantly looking forward, and seemingly oblivious to everything.

Even to the villager dancing on one guard’s head.

The duo passed them unopposed and walked into the castle. It was awkwardly small and unappealing from the cobblestone and area inside of the first room. The first room they walked into was a throne room with four emotionless guards, a blue carpet, and a throne of iron blocks. To the left of the room was a set of double doors with a painting of two people fighting with a Kung Fu style. The duo walked through the doors and into a small courtyard. A lone iron golem by the name of Quincy perched on one of the guards’ shoulders. All three of them guarded the next set of double doors to the king’s room.

They passed the guards with no resistance.

When the duo walked into the next room, they noticed that it a blue carpet covered the floor, a double bed with fancy decoration around it sat beside a few pane windows, and a jukebox, a cauldron, a brewing stand, a wardrobe, a map, a clock, and an odd chest with a purple glow and a black and green exterior either huddled together or hung from the cobble walls. Twilight felt a strong power from the unusual chest and walked up to it. She eyed it carefully and opened it with ease. Disappointing Twilight, the chest had nothing in it.

That’s an ender chest. It can store items you place in there and teleport them to other ender chests around the world. Plus, no one can take what you put in it.

Twilight’s eyes grew with astonishment as she examined its hinges, lock, material, and murky black insides. With every word she said, she climbed deeper and deeper into the chest. “How does it work? Is it some type of forgotten magic or something even more exotic?”

Honestly, there is no real explanation. To me, it just works, and that’s good enough.

“I think it has to do with the recipe to create it using ender pearls,” Gingerbread suggested.

Twilight’s head popped out of the chest and cocked in curiosity. “Ender pearls? What are those?”

“They’re a drop from these things called Endermen. They are very deadly and pretty dang smart. They can be pretty dangerous if you are not well equipped like now.”

“I’ll probably need a few of them to see if I can harness their ability or something. It almost sounds like they involve teleporting.”

Gingerbread was about to answer, but Ty interrupted him before a word came out.

We think that’s what they involve too, but we’re not sure yet.

Ty sent Gingerbread another message. It read ‘Don’t say a word about them. I want to see how she’ll react to one of them.’

Gingerbread kept that in his mind and hushed about the ender pearls.

“Ah, so we have visitors in Millstown?” The voice was old and wise enough to catch both Gingerbread and the rummaging Twilight’s attention. “It has been quite some time since we had any that were not monsters.”

A villager with a white beard, hair around the sides of his head, a red and white robe gilded in gold and silver, and a crown of silver entered the room. “You two seem like nice folk. One looks like a traveler, and one looks, extraordinary, but that might be an understatement.”

“Who, me?” Twilight pointed a hoof at herself to emphasize her point.

“Yes. Pray tell, where are you from exactly?”

Twilight jumped out of the ender chest and onto the blue carpet. “I’m from a nation called Equestria. My name is Twilight Sparkle, one of the governing princesses of the land and the element of magic.” She looked at her back with slight disappointment. “Well, I should have wings right now, but I don’t know what happened to them.”

You did enter this world without a horn as well, so they must be somewhere.

“And who are you supposed to be?” Gingerbread asked the old king.

The king responded politely and calmly. “I am King Appleton, ruler of the Nation of Repressed Cities and of Millstown.” He held out a hand to Gingerbread. He approached and shook King Appleton’s hand. “It is a pleasure to meet you.”

Twilight looked out at the sky and saw the static sun. She immediately thought about Celestia and turned to King Appleton. “Uh, King Appleton? Do you have some sort of creature that moves the sun?”

“We do not. We have proven that the sun and moon revolve around the planet a long time ago. Why do you ask?”

“Well, where I’m from, Princess Celestia is the only one that can raise the sun. She needs to manually do it every day.” So, if a sun needs to be moved by magic, how does your sun move?”

“Gravity, fair lady. Gravity is what makes this world work. It is what creates the stars, what drives the forces of the universe, and what keeps us from falling off this world. Does your world by happen to be somewhere far away? By that, I mean by sea.”

Twilight put a hoof up to her chin with deep wonder. “I don’t know. Not all of our world is charted yet.”

Impossible. How can this exist when it-iaa never mind. Just rambling about random stuff over here.

Twilight pasted a confused entanglement of movements onto her face. “Okay, then. Anyway, why isn’t the sun moving if it doesn’t need somepony to move it?”

King Appleton looked out into the sky and donned a face of worry. “Oh, yes, I forgot about that. You see, there is this fortress high in the sky called the Sky Temple. It is basically a solitude for the Air Mobs and the determiner of what happens in the sky. Ever since the dreaded Mobtrocity stormed that place, the planet has never seen full day nor night. It seems to be stuck at dawn for eternity.”

“Wait just a second,” Gingerbread blurted with suspicion. “You just said that the world is run by gravity. If that’s the case, how does a temple in the sky override all of that?”

“Honestly, I do not know. It just does.”

“Maybe it has a lot of magic,” Twilight guessed. “Magic can do all sorts of things.”

Yup, and magic is definitely what should be our last resort, not physics or anything else that makes actual sense.

Twilight snapped at the air. “Hey, magic is serious business! Don’t tell me that you never saw it before.”

If Harry Potter counts as seeing magic, I guess.

“What’s Harry Potter?”

“It’s a fictional series revolving around magic,” Gingerbread answered casually. "It has some of the same spells you can do, but they are performed in a different way."

Twilight sighed and lowered her head a little. “Well, at least you know what it might be, Ty.”

Gingerbread brought the discussion back on topic by interrupting the next sentence. “Moving on, King Appleton, where is this Sky Temple?”

“It is suspended in the sky, but there is a giant tree that leads up to it in the Great Forest,” King Appleton answered.

“Can we get the key, then?”

“I’m afraid I do not fully trust you two yet. I kept the Great Forest forbidden to keep the Mobtrocity out. However, if you prove yourself by helping out Millstown, I might be willing enough to give you it.”

“You don’t trust us after that giant conversation?” Twilight irritably spouted at King Appleton.

“I do not know where you two came from and what your motives are. For all I know, you two could be Mobtrocity soldiers. However, helping a human is not possible for a Mobtrocity member.”

“But we helped out one in Jungle Pass!”

“I did not see it; therefore, I do not believe it.”

Twilight groaned angrily as she stormed out of the castle.

Gingerbread faced King Appleton as he headed for the door. “We’ll do what you want. Just stay here until we come back, okay?”

King Appleton nodded as Gingerbread walked out of the castle. She approached Twilight, who was sitting under a tree’s shade. Her ears were folded down to drown out the noise of the villagers roaming around her.

Gingerbread kneeled down next to her and placed a hand on her right shoulder. “Look, I don’t want to do this either, but we’ll have to if we want to get out of here.”

“But I need to leave as fast as possible!” Twilight argued as she kept one of her ears only partially closed. “Who knows what’s happening in Equestria right now!”

“But you need your wings, right? And you were also talking about feeling weak earlier. You want your wings and power before you leave, right?”

“Well, yeah. Maybe this world is just getting to my head. Also, how do you stay sane around these villagers? They just keep talking and talking and talking and it’s driving me crazy!” Twilight twitched an eye and forcibly shook her hooves .

“I can tell. Come on, let’s see what the locals have for us to do.”

Twilight got up and followed Gingerbread to Bill’s Library—the first building they saw on their left when they entered the town. They entered the library and examined it. Twilight glanced at the different novels and bits of information on the bookshelves. She quickly noticed that the books were organized by author’s name and put in specific areas. Non-fiction was at the back of the library next to Bill, and fiction was near the front door. She levitated one of the books off of a shelf and examined it carefully. It was Knowing the Characteristics of Dimensions and Traveling Through Them by Derek Windshear. She opened it and immediately dove her nose into its pages.

Gingerbread walked up to the log counter where Bill was standing at. He was a basic villager with a white robe fit for a librarian. His voice was masculine but not rough or deep. “Welcome! What can I get you today?”

“Well, I’m seeing if you have any work for me,” Gingerbread answered as he glanced around the library. Twilight was still reading through the book.

“Huh, I didn’t think someone was man enough to take up my offer. I had a book in here that Frederick Ivanshin wrote called Mobtrocity: Killing the Horrors Next Door. It talked about their weaknesses, strategies, troops, and weaponry over the years. Apparently, a few thieves came in here a day ago and snatched it. It was the only book taken from me. None of the others were touched.” Bill set five silver coins and a potion of regeneration on the counter. “If you help me, I’ll give you this as a reward. Do you have a deal?”

“Deal.” Gingerbread and Bill shook hands as they smiled at each other. Twilight was still reading the book.

Gingerbread walked back to the front door and waved a hand over to Twilight. “Come on, Twilight. We need to find a book thief.”

“Not now, I’m reading this.” She shooed Gingerbread away with her front left hoof. “This guy has some pretty interesting ideas.”

Gingerbread shrugged and walked out of the library. He examined the area for any possible thieves. The first person he confronted was one of the smaller people next to the library. He got up to their face and stared them down threateningly. “Did you steal a book?”

“Uh, no,” the guy mumbled rather calmly. “I don’t even care for reading.”

Gingerbread confronted another person nearby the town blacksmith. “Did you steal a book?”

“Nerp,” the confronted guy answered. “Not one to steal from others like that.”

Gingerbread did this to three other people. All of him gave negatives on being the thief. One person, however, overheard his questioning and walked away from Gingerbread carefully.

“Did you steal a book?” Gingerbread was right behind him now. The guy turned around and frantically darted his eyes from one side to another.

“Nope! No stolen books here! Just an ordinary person in an ordinary town!” The confronted guy was obviously sweating and shaking at this point, like a liar.

Gingerbread stuck his face closer to the guy. “I’m not sure of that. You look like you’re lying to me.”

The guy immediately broke into a sprint and headed for the front gate of Millstown. Gingerbread followed him up to the gate and cornered him to a tree. The guy backed away from Gingerbread and looked upwards. For some reason, his voice turned from a basic accent to a raspy, bony growl. “The jig is up, boys! He knows!”

Three zombies sprung out of the tree and stood next to the guy. They wore grey suits with a red eyed creeper face printed on its front. The confronted guy lifted his face to reveal a clean skeleton with a stone sword in one hand and a book in the other. The skeleton wore a grey leather cap with the same creeper face on its front.

One of the zombies, normally known as a Mobtrocity Goon, cracked his knuckles and slowly walked up to Gingerbread. “We’re gonna teach you a lesson for blowin’ our cover. Get ready for a fist sandwich, punk!”

Gingerbread pulled out his wooden sword and swung at the goon. He backed away as the other two goons rushed up to him. He sliced at them three times each before dealing a critical hit on one of them. They fell to the ground and died as the other two rushed him again. He struck the two goons twice each, killing one and injuring the other. He finished off the surviving goon and headed for the Mobtrocity Scout. The scout thrust his sword at Gingerbread, dealing a little damage as he backed away with the book in hand. Gingerbread jumped and slashed down at him, dealing critical damage. The scout sliced at him twice but missed both times. Gingerbread then rushed the scout and hacked at him with minor fury. The scout fell into a pile of bones and smoke. Gingerbread grabbed the book, experience, and mob loot and walked back to the library.

Twilight was still reading the book when he entered the library. Twilight looked up at Gingerbread for a second before resuming her reading. Gingerbread smacked the book on the counter and took the reward. “I got your book back. A skeleton and three zombies took it.”

Bill took the book as he shouted at his own stupidity. “I knew I should’ve got the guard bundle! Anyway, thanks for helping. It means a lot for someone to give a stolen book back to me.”

Twilight shut the book and exclaimed her thoughts. “And, done! That guy sounded like he had some developments on traveling between different worlds from what he was saying. He even talked about creating plans for something called a DPD.” She turned to Gingerbread and looked up at him as she put away the book. “Do you think he can get me back home?”

“Maybe. I guess we could search for–” Gingerbread checked the book for a second “–Derek Windshear whenever we have time.”

“Derek Windshear?” Bill questioned in slight disbelief. “Good luck finding him nowadays.”

“Why? Did he die?”

Bill shrugged and gave a slanted frown. “Don’t know. He disappeared off the face of Minecraftia three years ago. That book was published and distributed when he made it four years ago. I read some of his work, and boy oh boy was he nuts. He talked about finding other worlds that were completely different from ours and whatnot. If it wasn’t for King Dynamite’s pardon on him, he would’ve been beheaded for blasphemy against the Church of Joe.”

“Church of Joe?” Gingerbread and Twilight asked in unison.

“It’s the most widely accepted religion in Bercotta. Heck, the church here is one of the many churches built specifically because of that. It’s considered to be the first church ever built for Joe.”

“I need to see this Church of Joe,” Gingerbread demanded as he walked out of the library.

Twilight lingered for a second to talk to Bill. “Do you have any books about a place called Equestria?”

Bill took out a piece of paper with a list of book titles. He mumbled the names to himself until he got to the bottom. “Nope, sorry. No one published anything about a place called that.”

Twilight thought that the absence of any book about Equestria made sense. If it didn’t exist here, why would the locals have any books about it?

She walked out of the library and caught up with Gingerbread. He kept walking until he eventually reached a tall cobblestone building in the shape of an L. He then entered through the door with a sign saying ‘Joe House’ above it. Twilight followed him inside and kept quiet.

The priest on the other side of the room raised his voice over the other people listening to his sermon. “And as the handeth of Joe touches down upon the fief lord’s headeth, the lord only shouts one statement in regret to his savior. ‘By god, is t Wednesday already? I has’t not claimed mine cuppeth of coffee yet!’ Joe forgives that gent and telleth that gent to not forget again. ‘My issue, thee art but a beginner in mine not restful eyes. Now, I bless thee with most wondrous skills that an emperor of olden days would envy.’ And the lord praises Joe once again. ‘Thank thee, mine savior, thou has’t given me enlightenment by thy hands. May I ever beest in thy debt for the rest of mine days.’ "

The congregation that sat in the pews stood up and grabbed their cups of coffee. They sipped three times only and put their cups back onto their laps as they sat back down. The priest noticed Gingerbread and Twilight in the entryway to the room. “Joevians, we have two newcomers today. May these newcomers step up to the lectern?”

The duo walked from the entryway to the lectern. Gingerbread decided that he should be the one to talk to the preacher since he was very interested in what was happening here. “Are you the priest of this church?”

“Why yes, I am. Say, what brings you two to the Joe House at this time of day?”

“I would like to know this religion you have.”

“Ah, yes. The Church of Joe is a wonderful basis for faith and spiritual strength. It revolves around the teachings of joe and His drink of heavenly nourishment: coffee. In His eyes, coffee is His blood, His gift, His symbol, and Himself. That is why we call coffee during our weekly consumption the Cup of Joe.”

Gingerbread possibly facepalmed hard enough to slap his head off his body. “Seriously, Ty? You really went there?”

“Went where?” asked Twilight.

“I need to say it. You ask too many questions, Twilight.”

Twilight held up a sheepish grin through her words. “Sorry, it’s just that there’s so many things happening in this world that are changing everything I knew about reality.”

“Anyway,” Gingerbread faced the priest again, “I was wondering if you had some work that we can do.”

The priest held up a single index finger. “Yes, I do have something you can do for me. I found out that there are a few people in this town under the possession of demons. I believe that spreading Joe’s word will expel the demons out of their bodies.” The priest rummaged through a small box next to him. “And, for a reward, I believe these can be of use.” The priest placed two bottles of fire resistance on the lectern.

Gingerbread nodded with determination in his voice. “Consider it done.” The duo left the Joe House and wandered aimlessly around Millstown. Gingerbread randomly picked the smaller people of the bunch. The villagers were, well, villagers, so he did not pick them, but at least they had names to keep them special.

Gingerbread found a person next to a pumpkin farm nearby the Joe House and confronted him. His face was fairly close to the person. “Go to the Joe House.”

“I already do,” the person replied with indifference.

Gingerbread and Twilight walked over to another random person at the wheat farms. Gingerbread gave the same line to the person. “Go to the Joe House.”

The person grunted and moaned as his mouth opened wide. A blood-red skeleton with a flaming wooden sword and glowing yellow eyes crawled out of the mouth. It then faced the duo and pointed its sword at Gingerbread. Its voice was distant, hollow, and most of the of all, guttural. ”Fools! Both of you will be devoured for your insolence against us.”

The demon struck first, immediately encasing Gingerbread in flames. It hopped to the left and aimed for Twilight. She blocked its next attack with her sword, but the demon outsmarted her with that attack. It kept the sword in place as it kicked at her two forelegs, knocking her to the ground. The demon pushed away her levitating sword as it readied itself into thrusting position. Gingerbread, still in flames, swiped his sword at the demon. It backed away and lost its concentration as Gingerbread sliced at it three more times. Twilight finished off the demon by stabbing it with her still levitating sword. The lights in its eyes died as it fell to the ground. The red drained from its body and converted into a sickly black. The demon withered away in only seconds, leaving nothing but the sword that was still burning and a few bones.

Gingerbread stopped burning and approached Twilight. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, just a bruise,” she replied as she got back up. “It’ll heal itself.”

Yeah, be careful of those things. They’ll get the upper hand quickly.

The person faced Gingerbread as he felt his chest. He dropped to complete gratitude. “Thank you, kind sir! That thing was suffocating me my entire life!”

“No problem,” Gingerbread announced through his slight smugness.

Twilight walked over to the wooden sword on the ground and picked it up. “Huh, I guess this is what that thing used.”

“What is it?”

Twilight examined the name on the hilt of the sword. “It’s called Little Burner, and it’s tagged as uncommon.”

That means that it’s kind of rare. There are common, uncommon, rare, and artifact items. The higher its rating, the more it’s worth, except for artifacts. Normal shops can’t sell or buy them due to restraints by their owners.

“Okay.” Twilight put the sword in her inventory and directed her eyes to Gingerbread. “Let’s go find these two other demons!”

And so they did. The second one they found had another Little Burner, so Twilight switched to her bow and shot several arrows at the demon. It died quickly and dropped experience, bones, and coal. When they encountered the third one, they had to rush it to prevent it from shooting arrows at them. They felled the demon as fast as the last one and collected its mob loot. When they returned to the priest, Gingerbread shook hands with him and collected the two potions. The duo then walked back to King Appleton. Along the way, Twilight brought up something that Gingerbread didn’t expect.

“Hey, Gingerbread?”

He turned his head to his right and looked down at Twilight. “Yeah?”

“Are you magical in some way?”

“No, why do you ask?”

“Ever since I met you, I felt some sort of magical aura around your body. I think you have some hidden spells or something you’re keeping from me.”

“Didn’t you feel any auras on the other creatures so far?”

“Nope, not yet, only you. You’re the only one literally oozing in magic right now.”

I don’t like where this is going.

The duo were now in the throne room of the castle. Gingerbread asked Twilight yet another question. “But how can you sense something like that?”

“I can usually sense if something has magic flowing through it or not,” Twilight answered. “You seem to be flowing with it, so you have magic.”

“How can I have magic if I don’t use it or know it?”

“There are unicorns I knew or heard about that don’t use their magic at all, yet they still have an aura. Even though you have one, it feels, strange.”

Ty couldn’t handle the speculation.

Moving on! I just remembered that you two still have some money on you.

“What’re we going to spend it on, though?” Gingerbread questioned while he stared at the five silver coins in his hand. “Five bucks is not enough for both of us.”

Do you know that monsters can also drop money? Specifically, pigmen and zombies.

“How does that help us exactly? We still have five bucks.”

Another answer didn’t matter since the duo were already in King Appleton’s room. He turned to Gingerbread and Twilight with happiness fluttering around his face. “You helped out the locals, and you slain a few Mobtrocity members too! They called me as soon as you two finished helping Bill and the Joe House.”

Gingerbread was completely confused about this town’s technology. “You don’t even have phones! They shouldn’t exist yet!”

“But they have existed for some time now. Anyway, you two have proven yourselves worthy of entering the Great Forest.” King Appleton approached Gingerbread and gave him the key to the Great Forest. “Be careful, though. The Mobtrocity has soldiers all over that area. They can appear out of nowhere.”

Twilight paced around the room with no waiting on her mind. “Well, let’s get going! I can’t wait to get out of this crazy place!”

King Appleton quickly interrupted the duo’s departure. “Hold on a second, I need to warn you two before you leave.” Twilight and Gingerbread turned around and handed King Appleton their focus. “I have heard some rumors about the Mobtrocity’s new target. They are taking interest in you two, especially Twilight. If you attempt to enter the Great Forest, expect some resistance along the way.”

“We’ll take note of that, King Appleton,” Gingerbread assured to the king. “We should be able to handle this.”

The duo left the castle and headed for Jungle Pass. Along the way, Ty noticed another message from the world. This message only brought fear and concern to his heart.

Pinkie Pie has joined the game.

Ty quickly messaged Gingerbread. The message read ‘I think this is going to turn from bad to worse soon.’.

Gingerbread replied back. His message read ‘Without a doubt.’.